Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Taking the Bus: 11th Street

I haven't written anything in the Taking the Bus series in awhile, but I decided it was time -- I usually take the 14th Street buses (52, 53, 54) to and from work, but recently traffic has been bad so I've been trying the 11th Street bus (the 64), and I've found they're much faster.

The route starts downtown at Constitution Ave, and it heads up 11th to Monroe, then goes through Petworth on New Hampshire Ave to Fort Totten Metro. Southbound it follows the same route. What I've found is that if there's traffic on 14th, it's usually lesser on 11th Street, plus there's fewer people getting on and off, and thus less stops. It might be worth checking out if you usually commute to and from downtown.

Here's the route for the 64 (and the 60, which goes from the Ft. Totten Metro to the Petworth Metro).

There's also the 62 and 63, which go up Sherman, but I haven't tried those.

2 comments:

I used to take the now-defunct 66 from time to time to get to U street or downtown. About a year ago its route was merged with the 64 and just circumstantially I haven't taken it that much lately. But I loved the 66 because it was basically empty all the time.

Although it only came every 20-30 minutes, if you just planned a trip, you could get from north Columbia Heights all the way to Gallery Place area in 10 minutes because it stopped so infrequently. It was awesome.

Of course the fact that nobody used it probably has a lot to do with its route being eliminated.... it did mimic the green line in some ways but if you were on the right schedule it could be a lot faster than the metro.